92 promise of home-cooked food, and vodka, and he'd been thinking he'd be sucked off by whitey and paid for his trouble and maybe clear out whitey's posses- sions, but that was not how it came about, and the panic in his eyes said that this was so. Reddish-kinky hair and a red sheen to his skin. Like oxblood shoe pol- ish. Good-looking and he knew it, but it's too late now. I secured his head in the clamp and brought the icepick to his right eye, lifting the eyelid as Dr. Free- man described, but when I inserted it he struggled, screaming through the sponge, and there was a gush of blood and I came, I lost control and came, so hard I kept coming and coming like a convulsion. I couldn't stop, or even breathe. I was groaning and gasping for air, and when it was over and I was in control again, I saw the damage I had done--the icepick rammed up to the hilt in his eye up into his brain, and he was dying, he was dead, another fuckup and no zombie. And then the disposal of. The heavy weight oE A downer. Must drive at the speed limit and obey all traffic regulations and must not act "suspicious." A land:fi11 or dump is most strategic, of course, where the ground is already broken. And far from home base-fifty, seventy, a hundred miles. The extra effort is worth it, like buying a new wig, whiskers evety time. Vacant lots, wooded areas near parks- risky because kids play in th.em But empty marsWand beyond the Interstate where nobody ever goes is a good bet. How many times. I keep mementos but no records. I memorize what's re- quired then move on. And sometimes forget. But now I have the basement of this old house. a poured concrete floor and reinforced walls with beaverboard panelling. The gas furnace is here, water heater, fuse box, caretaker's workbench, and such tools as my electric power drill and Cherokee chainsaw. The old section of th-ê- is never used. It has a hard- packed earth floor. The ceiling rafters are low, and filthy with cobwebs, walls rotted. The dty stone cistern unused for decades. A strong smell of drains and some- seepage in the rainy months, but I have installed a second pump. To get back there you move on your haunches, slowly. You need a good flashlight. You need a will that cannot be broken. The cistern has almost been con- verted and will be ready for use soon. And if a zombie is a failure, there is the remainder of the cellar for safe disposal in the e arth. And there is a new door re- p l ac i ng ffie old rotted door, and last week I purchased a steel padlock from Sears for extra security. I WAS allowed to plead guilty to "sexual misdemeanor committed against a minor." The lawyer Dad hired for me and the prosecution lawyer worked it out. And Judge L. was under- standing. Where money changes hands, and it is the word of an inexperienced white man, unmarried, twenty-nine years old, against the word of a black boy from the projects, and this black boy, ten ye ..ars old, is from a "dysfunc- tional" family, there is no problem knowing where justice lies. And QP. was repentant, he was ashamed and had "learned his lesson." One look at him, you-kaew. Two years' suspended sentence, psy- chotherapy, counselling. Regular re- porting to probation officer Mr. T. Agreed? A LIITLE sickness in the air from so Leaving Judge L.'s chambers I was much fragrance everywhere--some- shaky. I was wiping my face, and Dad body's left-behind "New Anthology of was gripping me by the elbow. Buck up, English Verse." I leafed through it in the son (quote unquote), everything is fine. student union and read these lines, and Son? And, outside, Mom and Ruthie something rang in me like lhe bells-of- allJ ReveleuJ E ckhorn, who is Mom's the Music College. Because now it is frien d and who "vouched" for me to the spring, it is April, and my first year of authorities, were waIting. And I was probation is behind me. wearing a new suit of brown checks and I was wearing a beige bow tie, and my hiifìiád been cut, trimmed neat at the ears and the nape of the neck, and I was not crying now but smiling and hugging my family, and I was shaking Reverend Eckhorn's hand saying Thank you, thank T HE house at 118 Church Street, built 1892. Crumbling stone foundation. The cellar was renovated in the nineteen-fifties so there are two sec- hons: the new, and the old. The new has you, I am so happy, so grateful. Thank you for your faith in me. A warm rain speck- led my face. Dad handed me the car keys wIth a request for me to drive, and I under- stood it was to show how he trusted me. The family trusted me and I would not let them down ever again. Driving out of the city to Dale Springs, where the houses are set on large lots and the streets are tree-lined, I felt such a sense of homecoming and being loved, and I kept well within the speed limit, not mind- ing when other drivers honked their horns and passed me impatiently. Ruthie, who is Big Sis even now, aged thirty-five and principal of a high school, looking after her kid brother, said, "Qyen was always the one of us who could drive a car," then adding quick, "I mean is. Right, Qyen?" I grinned into the rear- view mirror. "Right, Ruthie." Driving home. A warm-rainy windy day. Dad beside me in the passenger's seat, stroking his chin where his goatee had been and Morn and Ruthie in the back, I could almost not remember why I was so happy and feeling so free, thinking of black cock, shy shrinking boy penis like a baby rabbit, skinned. 1'd held it in my hand tickling the tip with the tip of the icepick, but the pills hadn't taken effect yet, and the boy panicked, beginning to bellow even before he broke free, and crashed through the locked rear door of the van. So help me God, I don't know how. And run- ning, calling out for help, bellowing like a fire alarm rising louder and louder. My zombie! He had not asked for a nickel, really. He was trusting as a dog. Yet I could not trust him. They were asking me something, and I wasn't listening, but I must have an- swered, O.K. Dad laid his hand on my shoulder . For the first time, driving that day, I believed I could feel the motion of the Earth. The Earth rushing through the emp- tiness of space, spinning on its axis, but you don't feel it. For to feel it is to be scared and happy at once and to know that nothing matters but that you do what you do and what you do you are. And I felt it, and I knew I was moving into the future. There is no past anybody can get to, to alter tlungs or even to know for sure what they were, but there is defirutely a future, we are already in it. .